One Year!

Garage Hot Rods is one year old.

Bill Mayfield’s 1965 Barracuda was the first Garage Hot Rod, followed by 32 more great cars.

The hot rods featured in GHR this year included cars from (in alphabetical order) AMC, Buick, Chevrolet, Chrysler, Dodge, Ford, Mercury, Plymouth, Pontiac, Rambler, and Willys.

We went all the way back to 1920 for Rick Horne’s T-Bucket roadster, and up to 1987 for Johnathan Marvin’s Buick Grand National, with stops at 1932, 1953, 1957, 1958, every year from 1963 to 1970, 1972, and 1977 in between.

Photo courtesy of Bill Mayfield

YearOne wheels give the car a great stance.

American Racing Wheels give the Riviera a great stance

The pony car that started it all

I was pleasantly surprised to learn how many car shows there are in the Southeast, which allowed me to talk with hot rodders – and see their great cars – in person. But GHR isn’t confined to the Southeast.

Thanks to Twitter, I got in touch with Scott Bares in Minnesota, who shared the story about his 1953 Willys Aero Ace Coupe in a phone conversation with me. If you keep up with Scott on Twitter (@SBares) you know that he was targeting to debut the Willys at the MSRA ‘Back to the 50s’ car show in June, but a blown rear main seal – the night before the show! – derailed those plans. Scott told me a few days ago an engine transplant is in progress and the Aero Ace will be rolling again soon.

My friend Dick not only let me feature his classic ’57 Chevy, and shared some fuel system diagnostic tips, but he also ferried me out to McDade, Texas for their Watermelon Festival and Car Show, giving us a look at Daemon Butts Corvette, and Carl Theaker’s AMX.

Thanks to Instagram and email, Julia Eliasson told me not only about her Firebird, but also about the very active hot rodding community in Sweden. How active? The article about Julia’s Trans Am is by far the most viewed post so far on GHR.

Also thanks to Instagram and email – and my neighbor Michael who provided translation services – we got to read about Philipp Esslinger’s Mustang in Germany.

As you’d probably expect, most of GHR’s readers come from the U.S. And of course Julia and Philipp have brought lots of readers from Sweden and Germany, but I’m really blown away to see that GHR has readers from 61 (!) different countries – covering North America, South America, Europe, Asia, Africa, and Australia. (To my knowledge, no one has read GHR in Antarctica.) Clearly hot rodding knows no bounds.

It’s been as much fun as I thought it would, and your support has been stronger than I even hoped for. Monthly page views for GHR have gone up 343% from the first month, and are continuing to grow. I can’t adequately express my appreciation to the folks who have shared their hot rod stories with me, and to those of you who have helped spread the word about the site.